The Great Divide

A common topic of today is the great divide that exists between various groups within our republic.  Some see it as a simple divergence between political parties but, at a more basic level, I see the root cause as being between the extremely wealthy and everyone else.  If you can’t afford to easily write checks for $100,000 a pop without making a dent in your finances, you are “everyone else.”  Without that ability to funnel cash to decision-makers you have no say in the operation of our government and what it does for and to its citizens.  There are roughly 331,899,280 of us and 720 of them.

For my calculations, I drew the line at the billionaire class, and by estimate, there are 720 of them in the US who could easily afford to hand out large sums of money without thinking.  There are also billionaires outside the US who manage to influence and guide decision-making in our country.  If we add to this group, the 4,971 corporations with over $1 Billion in revenue, we have 5,691 entities with deep pockets to control the destinies of an entire nation.  This is not a hard number and there are degrees of influence that may be had by the sub-billionaire individuals and large corporations, but it goes to illustrate the nature of the great divide.

The mere fact that legislation can be bought by anyone is what should be abhorrent.  Before the Supreme Court removed all barriers to money influencing legislative decision-making when they equated wealth to “free speech,” we had at least some semblance of honesty in politics.  Now, those with the biggest checkbooks have the biggest “free speech” megaphones.  While there is still the ballot box to decide which politician gets to make legislation, it must be realized that voting decisions are now being based on information that may be more easily corrupted than at any time in our history.

With big money now in control of our former “free press” and all of its new platforms, the messages used to influence the voters making decisions about who they want to represent them, is tainted.  We now see those with fame, wealth, education, and corporate, religious, political, or military control, being used to govern in whatever manner they see fit.  This is now the American oligarchy.  

Not all within this controlling group of individuals and groups have evil intent and some may have the good of the people in their hearts.  It, however, must be noted that, in a capitalistic society, money rules and whatever is needed to advance the bottom line takes priority.  Everything else is secondary.  

This brings us to a discussion of conmen.  By definition, a conman is a person who cheats or tricks someone by gaining their trust and persuading them to believe something that is not true.  The term comes from the word confidence whereby a person is fooled into some action when they are persuaded to confide or instill unwarranted confidence in another.  The fact that our congress has the word “con” right in its name is perhaps a coincidence.  The same would hold for a congressman or congresswoman.

By controlling the message, either through traditional news media or by any of the newer information dissemination avenues technology has provided, we have a tool that may be used to con large numbers of people.  Confidence tricks exploit human frailties like greed, vanity, religious fervor, lust, national pride, racism, sexism, or other cognitive biases.  Politicians and/or those who want to influence the selection of a politician may use the well-known methods of the confidence scheme to achieve their ends.

There is not some cabal of wealthy individuals or corporations working in consort so much as a collective learning of what works to effect.  If under-educated people are easier to con, then keeping education standards low is of some benefit while the wealthy class can afford themselves the best education money can buy.  If xenophobic behavior or racism is prevalent within a community, then appeal to those biases to distract from what you are really doing.  If you can appeal to nationalistic pride or some exaggerated feeling of machismo to defeat gun legislation in the face of school children being slaughtered, then there are profits to be made.

A certain unnamed politician can claim he is protecting Florida citizens from the job-stealing, disease spreading, criminals within the flow of migrants to the state, while rounding up those immigrants in another state only to ship them, at Florida taxpayer expanse, to a third state.  Who did he protect?  That same politician can claim he is protecting the rights of parents by banning books that mention accurate historical accounts of racial strife that might make some white people uncomfortable.  He can attack a minority group of gay or transgender people claiming to protect the religious ideology of a larger group.  We see politicians claiming to protect our freedom to vote while restricting that freedom for classes of voters who don’t share the same political views of that politician.

Yes, the divide and conquer adage works in subtle ways to advance wealth, power, and control over others.  How many times have you heard someone use a term with a positive connotation while actually doing something completely opposite?  Sell some new ideas as protection of freedoms while taking them away.  There is no other explanation that comes to mind when people vote against their own interests beyond the fact that they have been conned.  When it is easily apparent that income inequality has risen sharply, why do people continue to vote for those who promise that, by advancing the wealth of a few, some of that wealth will trickle down to their benefit? 

Ever since the Reagan reforms of the 80s, unions have been eviscerated, wages have stagnated, poverty and homelessness have increased, and the rich have gotten richer.  Antitrust regulations have been curtailed to the benefit of giant corporations that monopolize large industries.  Poor people still vote for those who want to cut Social Security, cut Medicare, eliminate unions, keep minimum wages stagnant, cut unemployment insurance, and basically make big businesses and their stockholders more money.  Someone appeals to voter anger and certain politicians got elected, and those politicians side with and are controlled by those who got them elected.  Who was it that got them elected?  It was those who donated large sums to PACs and campaigns who are now the beneficiaries of that largess.